Kingdom Life II: Soldiers of the Devil
by GreatOverseer
Summary: A KL2 fic (I know, you're screaming "but it's already been done before!". Truth is, I don't care.) The legions of the underworld, after so many years of failure, have come up with a master plan and are about to use it on the nearby Kingdom of Life. Rated T for heavy violence and some crude humor
1. Chapter 1

**PROLOGUE**

Dark, beneath the ground. But within it, a sliver of red light. Just barely a millimeter wide, but almost a mile long. Get past this line, and all hell breaks loose. Literally.

The underworld is a strange place, filled with mysterious things, locales, and people. It stretches for five-hundred square miles before petering out on the edge of the vast cliff of Tartarus, where no man returns from, at least with a soul. The strangest thing in the underworld, apart from its location (it is the shallowest underground realm in Robloxia, sometimes protruding into the bunkers of military groups and causing havoc and mayhem all round), is the capitol palace, the Imperium. It is only accesible from graveyards within a five mile radius of the Imperium, and then only to those imbued with the Mark of Lord Finaquadmore.

In this palace dwells the lord of the underworld, who is in fact Lord Finaquadmore. His full name, Gerrilon Recham Jechareth Kineto Polquinwong Finaquadmore XVII, has never been said by any man or woman, except his mother, who passed out and died of air loss at the end of naming him this amazingly convoluted title.

He is, at this particular time of interest, sitting on his throne in the dark Royal Room of the Imperium, in conversation with his chief priest...

"Magalomoc," Lord Finaquadmore said from his high seat, "tell me what has happened."

"Our demons were bested by the king's forces, sir," Magalomoc muttered.

"Even when they were imbued with the Challenger's Magic?"

The priest shuffled back a little bit as if expecting the hand of Finaquadmore to come down on his person.

"Even then," he confessed.

"You are sure they were imbued?" Finaquadmore cocked his helmeted head to the side, greasy two-foot long hair swinging like thin pendulums from under the rim.

"Yes..."

"Then you've failed as the Chief Priest of this realm," Finaquadmore boomed. "Guards..."

From out of the walls, shadows scuttled. Eight legged, dark, and menacing, they came bathed in the full red light of the ruby chandelier. Spydlings grabbed the chief priest and flipped him onto his back. Finaquadmore stood, his hand and arm extended, power unimaginable coursing from his fingertips. Magalomoc whimpered and tried to cringe back, but it was no use. Finaquadmore slowly began to chant an incantation.

"By the power that be within these walls,  
Banish this wretch from my dark halls.  
Send him down to the pit of despair:  
Tartarus, where only the bravest may dare  
Venture with weapons drawn shining and bright.  
Let him scream at the Maw's gruesome sight."

He struck Magalamoc across the temples, and the priest's body began to disintegrate, patches of fire belching out of the cracks. Soon only a skeleton was left, then not even that, just a pile of robes. Finaquadmore grunted in satisfaction, and the ghastly light receded from his fingers.

"Spydlings, dispose of the pitiful slave's filth, will you?" he ordered.

When he was alone he thought: _So, the king has indeed been training his knights, his entourage, his dragon slayers... But what will he do when I tell him that not only he is in danger of losing his life, but also his mark on history. There will never be a King Leonard after I'm done with him... and there never will have been a king Leonard after I'm done with him._

_Now, where am I going to get a new chief priest? Damn, I shouldn't have disposed of the man in the first place..._


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm a thief... issimple as that, y'knoooooow? Pick'n some bastard's pocket an' th' onnnnnly thing ya need ter know issss... wassat thing ye need ter knooow?"

The inn was almost deserted at this time of night. Every thief, every assassin, every off-duty knight had either gone thieving, gone assassinating or gone back on duty. All the people that remained were the whiskey maker, the bartender, an old woman, a run-down looking heggler, and Jericho the thief. Well, nearly a thief. Suffice to say he was a step or two below thievery. Maybe pickpocket is the closest term we can use here without raising him too high up on the pecking order. So Jericho was a pickpocket, and right then he was trying to brag to the barman, through his drunk stupor about how amazing he was at thieving from "the verr' rich" and "royerltyyy".

"Stolen th' jewels offfffff the prince of Verrrrrrity jus' a few daysh ago," he continued, as the bartender scrubbed at a stubbornly dirty glass. "Stupid arse nevvvv' knew wot hit 'im. Too bad. I made a-suuure 'e knew t'at was my bowie knife. And lookit 'im. Ungratefull li'l sod..."

"You're drunk, Jericho," said the bartender, who was still having troubles. "Time you should lay off the ale, son."

Jericho began to sing, slurring his words. The bartender walked carefully to Jericho's side of the bar, picked him up from his seat, and escorted him to the lodge entrance, the pickpocket's head lolling against his shoulder.

"'Ere, now go home and have a nice rest," the bartender advised. He smiled, gave him a little pat on the back, and went back into the bar to serve the old lady, who was screaming for her sherry from a table in the corner.

Jericho began to stagger up the stairs and down the corridor. He ran his hand along the plaster and clay walls happily. The sensation was a little blurred and uncertain, but familiar.

Suddenly in front of him a dark shape ran through a door and up the wall. Pradd was uncertain of what it was, but judging by the abundance of spiky things on the upper arms and ankles he would have guessed it was an assassin. The assassin was now hanging from the ceiling. Pradd walked forward still, unaware of the assassin's hands drawing a small blade. He became aware a few moments later as the dagger slammed up to the of the hilt into his heart.

Pradd sheathed the knife and sighed. Done. He'd killed that idiot pickpocket who'd stolen his brass knuckles and left him for dead two days ago. What a noob, he thought, as he entered the air ducts. Stupid arse never knew what hit him.

-o-

Pradd woke up the next morning in His Majesty's finest prison. He groaned and sat up in his hard, flat bed nailed to one wall.

Here, there must be a general description of what exactly Pradd looked like, or else the story would never reach any kind of depth, or for that matter continuity between chapters. He stood a little over five blox nine inches, and was thin and fit. As an assassin, it was kind of a ground rule that for every piece of cake you eat, it's an hour on the ox-treadmill. His face was thin, and his nose was of a normal size, although on Pradd's face it looked slightly larger than the average. His (shiny) blond hair, cut shoulder-length, always hung carelessly down, somewhat covering the right eye. Pradd never knew why, despite being in cramped environments on most of his jobs, as well as being up on roofs and fighting the occasional goblin, his hair stubbornly failed to become dull. Oh well, he reasoned, I'll have to live with being the only assassin whose head shines like a golden doorknob when the sun comes out.

Where had he gone wrong? Oh yes, it had been when he was exiting the inn with his knuckles and the police arrived just at the wrong time. They'd knocked him out and taken him... here. His feet crackled on the moldy straw that served as a carpet, and he walked up to the bars and surveyed the situation. They'd put him in the basement section this time, unlike all the other times he'd been caught sneaking out at night on one of his contracts. No guards in sight, but four ten-inch thick steel bars and a door made of the strongest titanium. He'd have to wait it out in there.

And look at what we have here, Pradd thought as he heard the footsteps. Someone's coming down to talk to me. Some four, by the sound of it.

Pradd was an assassin, and therefore knew how to tell the number of people walking at any given time, as well as the different sounds each person created with their feet. In this case, the footsteps were composed of two clanking metallic ones, four leathery ones, and one heavy sweeping one. Two knights, four footmen, and one royal. The king had come to see him, Jericho, a lowly assassin that these royals disapproved of immensely. Well, well. Sounds like a change of heart.

It was indeed the king.

King Leonard was, for all intents and purposes, the undisputed ruler of the Kingdom of Life. He wielded unquestionable power over all his realm (all thirteen and a half square miles of it) and its people (all 96,734 of them). A fat man in a beaverskin coat rimmed with Epic Duck feathers, and a bronze crown two blox tall, Leonard didn't look the type to rule. He was, after all, a slightly obese, three foot tall, two hundred-thirty seven year old man with back problems, throat cancer, and some sort of three foot-long whispy white rope that people called a beard and strung with flowers every Founder's Eve and New Year's Day. But he did have power, and even showed it by outliving his own sons. And he disapproved of assassins, greatly. Leonard valued his life more than anything else except for his kingdom and his fortune. So it was understandable why a profession that dealt death for a price was off his good books.

But here he was talking to Pradd.

"Mhm," he began when his knights had found a stool he could stand up on. "Mm, assassin?"

"Yes, Your Majesty?" Pradd asked.

"I... am inclined to just get to chopping off your head and, mmh, reproductive organs right now," Leonard wheezed. "However, due to current events... MMMMHHHgh!... I am resigned to my fate of..." He stopped to catch his breath. Akward, breathy silences were common when in the presence of His Divine Majesty the King of Life.

"...Letting you live," Leonard concluded.

"What exactly are 'current events'?" Pradd inquired.

"Well, you'll see when we let you out and bring you to the Captain of the Guard," the king answered.

"And... who the hell exactly would that be?"

The king chose to ignore that bout of profanity as the rest of his guards stiffenned.

"His name is Fergus," Leonard said. "Mmm, a capable general. He will lead you on to knowing what the plan is..." There was an akward pause.

"Oh bother, a plan," Pradd could be heard to have said.

ooo

Fergus was kind of taller than Pradd had imagined. However, he was a ginger like Pradd had imagined. He was also six blox seven inches, extremely fit, and wearing no armor, just a light, breezy green tunic. Fergus spoke in a rich, lilting accent. It's a fact that people on Earth love voices like this, and people on Robloxia are no different.

He did compensate by being one of the loudest users of this particular accent he'd ever met.

"Alright," he barked as Pradd stood before him, flanked by two knights who had hands on his arms. "THIS is serious business, so listen up! The Underworld has declared war on us... again!"

"They got their asses handed to them last time," Pradd said.

"Yeah, but they'll have to toss them back this time," Fergus replied. "They got somethin' real... dangerous."

"Okay."

"And you wonder why we sent for ye in the first place?"

Pradd considered this. He usually took what was given to him, not wondered about it.

"Er, no," he said.

"You're going on a very special mission, Pradd," Fergus said. "Down to the depths of Hell itself to take it down from the inside."

"All by myself?" Pradd asked.

"I'm considering sending some other talented people like yourself with you," Fergus answered. "Now go. The king wants you to attend a... briefing."


	3. Chapter 3

Pradd joined his team an hour after the briefing with Captain of the Guard Fergus. His head was swimming. Exactly what was the underworld doing this time that would be so damaging to the Kingdom of Life? The last time he remembered there being a rather lackluster battle on the part of the underworld demons, and a stunning victory for the Kingdom, with a free light show at the end just to show that they could blow things apart with style. So why was King Leopold so scared?

His team. Oh yes, his team. He turned and faced the direction of the royal throne with the members of his team beside him. His team was a motley crew indeed, from all walks of life, and from most of the major walks of death as well. There was a zombie standing right next to him, of no name or identification other than "that zombie over there". Next to the zombie was the crowned Prince of Light, Peter, who was holding his noise because apparently the smell of zombie, mild though it was to a sense-deadened assassin, was just too strong for him. Next to Peter was a knight in green leather armor, named Syrl, who was usually dead drunk by the time 9:00 PM came around. And at the end of the line, making up three people in total, were a dwarf named Beardsworth, a light wizard named Humphrey, and a sort of greenish humanoid who was probably female and named Faladir.

Leopold entered, sat on the throne, and faced them.

"You are all gathered here," he began, although his eyes were focused mostly on Prince Peter, "to partake of your own, hmm, little slice of battle. You must have heard that over the past HMMMM! day, the underworld has declared war on us again. Apparently, only stopping them from the ground will not be an option. They have a new weapon… that they will use on us as soon as they can, according to, emm, my chief spy Underwood.

"Called 'Project 7' it appears to be a solar and lunar-powered weapon. Underwood reported that the demons working on it were talking about not letting it fall out of the underworld until the battle. We don't, oh, know when the battle is, so we will be sending our best down into the underworld itself. Our best being you seven ex-jailbirds."

"Er," Pradd said, raising his hand. "Why, um, us exactly? 'Cause I mean, well, what with your… armies of knights, guards, footmen, the like, you could just send them, like."

"No, because you're the best assassin around. We've been observing you in case we need to reinstate the drafts, as with all these other talented individuals." Leonard tapped his nose knowledgeably. "Trust me, I *cough cough wheeze* know these things." The king sat back and seemed to sag inward. "Now get thee gone, the lot of, um, you."

"You heard my great granddad," Peter ordered. "Get going. We need to get suited up and get moving."

"Oh, bugger off, authority," Pradd muttered before following Peter to begin preparations.

-o-

Graveyards, even in tropical areas, aren't good places to be in at night. The graveyard of the Kingdom of Light wasn't any different, and it was beginning to show that the strike team didn't find it a good place in the slightest (except for That One Zombie who was totally at home here).

Pradd felt around the edge of a gravestone. Everything about this trip was so… wrong. For some reason he felt apprehension, dread, even though he had gotten all of his weapons and more back from the Kingdom's storage. He felt as though it wasn't, in the end, going to be enough. Five people, one zombie, and an elf against the entire underworld? The odds against that: completely astronomical, a thousand to one. Sure, they were outfitted with some pretty powerful stuff, but these weapons were powerful for the Kingdom of Life, and not the underworld. For example, somebody even in the nearest province of Robloxaville could destroy the entire Life army with only five people. And who knew what the underworld would do to them? After all, they were the underworld. They had… hellfire, dark swords, darkness guns… you name it.

The gravestone, a great marble thing that was just recently put in, was slick on Pradd's fingertips. He shivered.

Syrl and Beardsworth, meanwhile, were investigating the perimeter of the crypt room at the far end of the graveyard. Beardsworth's axe shone in the dwarf's hands, as it, assisted by its owner, hacked a wall away. Beardsworth ran into the crypt.

"Wait!," Syrl called. "Wait for me! I'm your bro!" He hurried after.

Back at Pradd's position, the assassin was just scouting out the next row of gravestones when a finger tapped him on the shoulder. At the same moment a blade was shown to him and then held to his neck.

"I don't like assassins," Peter growled, "and I sure as hell don't like you. You have the nerve and the audacity to not leave me alone on this quest. You know that if it were any other circumstance, I'd kill you?"

"Get the hell out of my personal space, your highness," replied Pradd, and moved away from the blade, investigating the headstones.

Suddenly, Syrl screamed.

"Aw, come on," everybody groaned, and ran over to find Syrl with a weird black thing with red eyes on his head. The thing was twisting at his hair and screeching, and it was obviously bothering Syrl immensely. The green knight tried to pry the demon off, but it stayed. With a howl, the elf princess, Faladir, lunged and sunk a dagger rimmed with emeralds into the demon's back. The blade sparkled through all the blood spurting out of the wound, and it was apparent that the material it was made out of was moonstone. Demon flesh frying off in large ripples and sparks, the attacker detached and squirmed on the ground for a few seconds. With only a skeleton left, finally the demon died in a hiss of frying innards and crackling hair and skin.

Faladir turned to the watchers, breathing heavily.

"Well," she demanded. "What are you staring at?"

"Um, nothing," Peter muttered. He fastidiously focused on the blade of his Claymore.

"That were a demon, if I ever clapped eyes on the bugger," Beardsworth exclaimed.

"Yup," Faladir agreed.

"How did you save me?" asked Syrl in awe.

"Something I call stabbing things with a dagger," Faladir replied with a small smile.

"I call it genius," Syrl endorsed.

More small, dark, ape-size creatures were approaching from a row of gravestones directly behind Peter. Peter didn't notice. He was too busy sharpening his Claymore's edges and scrutinizing Faladir's edges even more sharply than that.

"Watch out!" called Pradd, who had spotted the demons before Peter had. Prince Peter turned and swung the half-sharpened Claymore at the demons, spraying blood and making severed limbs fly everywhere. Pradd joined the fight and swung out his wrist daggers. Stabbing a demon through the throat he rammed another demon in the temples. Then, bringing both together, he violently spread his arms to make for a brutal finisher that sprayed brain and bone and black, evil blood. Syrl clumsily took out his halberd and swung at some demons, who scattered, although one latched onto his halberd in a desperate attempt to waylay him. Syrl took the chance and swung the demon into a spiked headstone belonging to "Ratchet the Great". Having disposed of it, the halberd found more demons, which were quickly dismembered. More demons, however, poured in from the source, whatever that was. The source, Pradd thought suddenly.

"Beardsworth, come with me!" Pradd said to the dwarf. Beardsworth saluted and drew his spiked shield/sword hybrid.

"Made in the mountain for killin' demons, and damn it if it ain't gonna do its job!" the diminutive warrior bellowed, and rushed after Pradd as the latter jumped and bounded through dead and alive demons. Demons mobbed Beardsworth just as he was catching up to Pradd, but within a few seconds there was a flash and a bright beam lanced from the crowd and knocked it back. Beardsworth emerged, blood-spattered and grinning, the sword attachments on his shield glowing with unholy blue light. He grinned madly at Pradd, who felt his will faulter. They went on, Pradd scouting and Beardsworth blasting enemies from behind with his unearthly firearm.

"Found it," Pradd yelled, and Beardsworth frowned.

"Found what, exactly?" he asked.

"The source, dum-dum," Pradd replied exasperatedly. "What, are you both deaf and blind?"

"I'm neither," Beardsworth said. "I'm pure dwarf, sonny." He helped move the coffin lid onto the box, and shut off the flow of demons.

The demons were still outnumbering the humans, however. Exposed to the light of the now exposed moon and the presence of the crypt house simultaneously, they were mutating. Each mutation was different. One was, for example, covered in spines from head to toe instead of hair. Another, perhaps the scariest in appearance, seemed to have grown a head several times larger than its body. This was almost impossible to defeat. And all these demons had the powers of regeneration. So the only alternative was to run somewhere.

"Into the crypts!" Peter called, slashing at a mutant demon. "I will hold these foul beasts off for you!" The demon grabbed his Claymore and threw it into the distance. They never heard it land. Peter closed his mouth.

"RUN!" they all screamed as the mutants swarmed.

Inside the crypt house they fumbled to open the crypts as the monsters cracked a little bit more of the stone making up the entrance. They had some notion that the entrance to the underworld was in this crypt house, which was why they had went to the graveyard in the first place. Syrl opened one, and a voice inside quietly groaned, "Oh, don't mind me. I'm just being dead…" Syrl quickly shut the lid and turned back to the rest of the group looking embarrassed.

Pradd felt one lid that was warmer than most, and slid it open. A seemingly infinite drop looked to be where the bottom should have been present. He thumped the lid to the side and beckoned everybody over. The last one over, That One Zombie, tripped over the lid and fell head on into the pit.

"Aw come on," Peter sighed.

"Let's go more carefully," Faladir said, and produced a rope from seemingly nowhere. She tossed it down the hole, keeping a grip on the knotted end. At that moment the arch over the door crumbled and blew inward, releasing black tentacles that searched for them.

"Shit, shit, nooo…" Beardsworth whimpered, and was the first one to slide down the rope very fast down the long pit.

"Bloody coward," Peter growled and stately walked up to the rope and slid down after the dwarf. Pradd felt very dizzy as he stepped to the edge of the coffin with the portal to another world at the bottom. He looked at the rope. Small fibers bound together, maybe not very strong, could snap at any time…

"Hurry up," said both Faladir and Syrl at the same time.

Pradd began to slide down. As he passed the border into the underworld, he felt a drastic increase in temperature. He started sweating. The walls seemed to be made of some sort of black stone.

As such tangential thoughts go, he suddenly thought: Where in the hell is Humphrey?


End file.
